


i'mma make a deal with the bad wolf (so the bad wolf don't bite no more)

by Princex_N



Series: making strange with one another [2]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Arguing, Gen, Major Character Injury, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23939023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Things go wrong so quickly, it's almost hard to remember that this is better than how it could have been.
Relationships: Alex Kralie & Brian Thomas & Timothy "Tim" Wright, Alex Kralie & Timothy "Tim" Wright, Brian & Timothy "Tim" W.
Series: making strange with one another [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711201
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	i'mma make a deal with the bad wolf (so the bad wolf don't bite no more)

**Author's Note:**

> title from [AWOLNATION's 'hollow moon (bad wolf)'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2PsXT88UeU)
> 
> this series also has [a Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6BFDzcIjZKLSrS5fKnGQmM?si=jqf7jrC1S76mA_mUMz0IAg) now, because I just can't help myself

It takes Tim a moment to actually understand what it is he's just witnessed. 

By the time he puts the pieces together, the screaming has already started. 

He's on his own. Jay is still at home, and Tim feels like a piece of shit about it, but he knows that it's leagues safer than being here, and this is just a confirmation. He'd been looking for Alex, but had found the hooded man instead, and chasing after him (following him?) had felt more like instinct than anything else. Tim's not even sure what he wanted - an altercation? Some answers? God knows, but Tim sure doesn't. 

It had been a chase, just like before, and Tim had seemingly blinked and lost sight of the man entirely, just like he had at the edge of the field last time. But, no, Tim had seen him fall somehow, hadn't he? 

The screaming certainly supports that theory. 

So does the half-remembered warning the groundskeeper had given him earlier. 

Tim doesn't bother trying to find the hole the man had slipped through, just ducks straight into the first stairwell he sees and _runs_. He doesn't know what he'd hoped to get when he had set chase, but he knows it hadn't been this. 

(The screams of pain echo strangely in the halls. Echo stranger in Tim's ears. Why does it spark grief in some dark part of his brain? Why does it sound so fucking _familiar?)_

He doesn't bother asking questions when he finds where the man hit the floor, there's no point. Tim can tell that it's bad just by looking - the stiff agony in how he holds his body even as he snarls and recoils at the sight of Tim, the quick flash of something bulging under the fabric of his jeans, something dark staining the back of that hood. Tim doesn't bother asking questions, knows he probably wouldn't get any answers anyway; just fumbles his phone out of his pocket and starts to dial with fingers that shake clumsy over the buttons. 

A shout interrupts him - snarling and rabid and animal, if the man had sounded angry before then he sounds _enraged_ now - and Tim looks up in terrified confusion to see Alex standing in the doorway at the end of the hall. The hooded man is screaming (if there's any words in the noise Tim can't understand a single one, is that the head injury or something else? Something deeper?) and moves like he wants to lunge forward, even though it's his own sharp wails of pain that stop him short before he can get close. 

"Don't move," Tim says, and isn't sure who he's talking to. Alex isn't moving yet, and Tim doubts the hooded man really _can_ , but he doesn't know what to expect from either of them and doesn't really want to find out. He has the number dialed but can't bring himself to press call, because this situation was already hard to explain and Alex's addition to the mix doesn't make it easier. If they send a patrol car along with an ambulance because they're all technically trespassing, Tim would rather none of them wind up shot for the sin of acting 'too erratic'. 

The silence stretches, the sound of the hooded man's agonized panting the only noise among them, all of them waiting to see who will make the first move. Alex looks stunned, a little scared, and Tim thinks that Alex is a lot of things, but a sadist has never quite seemed like one of them somehow. 

"Are you going to help us," Tim asks slowly, going out on a limb because what does he have to lose at this point (besides _Jay_ , strung up alone in Tim's house in a desperate attempt to keep him safe because Tim is an _idiot_ , and are the neighbors too used to Tim's nightmare wailing to check on Jay before he starves simply because Tim never got a chance to make it home and apologize?), "or are you just going to stand there and watch?" 

The hooded man screams something that might have once been a 'fuck you' if it weren't so mangled, his aborted struggles renewed, and Tim doesn't necessarily love the idea either, but they're running low on options. He drops his phone in favor of trying to pin the man down well enough to keep him from hurting himself any worse than he already has ( _P_ _rone restraints are illegal_ , Tim thinks distantly, _because the risk of death is too high_. Suffocating weight and pressure, he knows, remembers, hated it, but they're running _low_ on _options)_ and Alex stares with wide eyes that Tim can't read before a reedy wail of pain seems to solidify something inside him. 

He pulls his hand out of his pocket, and Tim wonders for a moment if he's just killed them both, killed them _all_ , but Alex's hand is empty, and after another long moment of tense waiting, he only moves forward to help. 

Tim doesn't bother to ask questions, just dodges a flailing arm and says, "My car is right around the corner. Is yours closer?" 

Alex shakes his head, dodges a kick and uses the movement to hook his arms around the man's legs and winces at the yelp it illicits. 

It's a struggle to get the man up and down the hall, and they shouldn't be moving him at all, Tim knows, but he's almost grateful for the way the man fights because at least it means they don't seem to be breaking him worse. He wonders at the man's outrage - almost like he would have just preferred they just left him there - and Tim wonders at how he understands the impulse, but doesn't have time to dwell on any of it, and isn't sure he'd want to anyway. 

Luck is the only thing that lets Tim get the door open, gets them into the back in a moment where the man is too exhausted to fight, and Tim clambers into the front seat to the sound of Alex getting the air punched out of him by a foot that slipped through while he was closing the door behind him. 

"Knock it _off_ , Brian," Alex snarls breathlessly as Tim is picking up speed out of the parking lot, and Tim feels so dizzy with sudden shock that he wonders if he should be the one behind the wheel at all, but they're _running low on options_. 

It can't be. There's no way. But when Tim glances in the rear view mirror, Alex has wrestled the mask off and the hood back, and it's Brian's lips pulled back in a snarl and _Brian's_ blown pupils glaring back at him.

Tim just translates the pressure behind his eyes into weight on the pedal, drives faster and faster and tries to pull the spun sugar static of his thoughts together well enough to remember which ER is the better one to go to. 

He doesn't let himself drift or slow down, ignores the enraged animal noise that Brian (Brian, god, _Brian)_ is making and the snarled curses that are Alex being hit and bitten in his attempts to restrain without making things worse. It all feels like a dream anyway, or maybe more of a nightmare - because Tim is keeping his eyes on the road but he keeps glancing back to see growing stains on the backseat polyester. He thinks of the gun, and wonders who has it, and knows that it's neither him nor Jay, and prays to a god that has never once answered that no one gets shot in the back of his car while he's behind the wheel on the highway. 

"Is it going to be easier to bring him inside on our own, or for one of us to go in and get help?" he asks over the noise, because Alex hasn't killed them yet and he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth before he has to at this point. 

"Just do it like we did before," Alex snaps back, and screams but doesn't let go when Brian digs his teeth into the meat of the arm pulled tight across his chest. "Fuck off," he yells. "If I was going to kill you, I would have." 

It hits a little too close to _something,_ and the fact that he doesn't leave it at that really doesn't help. 

"Maybe it would have been better if I did. _Fuck_ ," he exclaims, somewhere between panic and mania, something a little delirious cracking the curse down the middle. "This was a stupid idea. Things are gonna get worse. I _have_ to stop this from spreading any further." 

"That isn't how this _works_ ," Tim snaps back, fingers tightening on the wheel, even though he isn't actually sure and probably never will be. "Don't you think that's exactly what that _thing_ wants? You, out of control and killing people?" 

"Controlling this is exactly what I'm doing," Alex snarls, and Brian makes a noise that could be a laugh. Tim finds himself agreeing. 

The response that lines itself up on Tim's tongue could either win the argument or get all three of them killed, but Tim is tearing down the road with frantic recklessness and thinks of fire and static and isn't sure he actually cares either way all of a sudden. 

"When you killed Amy, did you feel like you were in control then?" he asks lowly, and Alex goes dead quiet. Brian doesn't seem to have anything to add to it either. For the first time, the car is silent.

Tim drives and lets the dull static of the tires on concrete tremble in his ears, and tries not to imagine the cool press of a muzzle against the back of his head - one he's half-sure he deserves. 

He pulls up to the ER doors and still hasn't felt it. He half-expects it when he ignores the shout of someone telling him he can't park there, and half-expects it when he fumbles with the door handles, but it never comes. Alex's eyes don't meet his and he only moves to help Tim drag Brian's still violently protesting body into the ER waiting room, and Tim can't tell if he's relieved or not. 

The back of Tim's head snarls in black and white protective rage as a swarm of nurses drag Brian out of their arms, onto a stretcher, and the sounds of their voices shouting orders over Brian's increasingly panicked struggles doesn't do shit to drown it out. 

"What happened?" someone asks over the noise, and Tim only stares mutely, suddenly terrified that opening his mouth will only allow canine growls to spill out from between his teeth and into the open air. 

"Fell through a second story floor," Alex says when Tim doesn't answer. His voice shakes only slightly, and it doesn't feel like an act. "We're urban explorers. Or, we were." 

He sounds honest, and the tremor in his voice is probably read as concern or panic by the doctor, who gives them a look that's equal parts pity and exasperation, but Tim meets his distant eyes and feels like he's looking at a wolf with flattened eyes and a tucked tail, but with sharpened teeth still bared. He manages to get his body to nod, not sure if it's in acknowledgement or agreement, pressing back the swell of pressure in his head and smothering a cough in his chest. 

"I need to move my car," Tim says, just as someone else is telling him the same thing, but Tim ignores them and doesn't look away from Alex's wary eyes. "And I need to get Jay, and I probably need to call my doctor and see if he can take on three new patients." 

Alex looks and doesn't speak, but Tim can still read confused surprise in the twitch of his eyes, and doesn't have the presence of mind to think about how getting Alex punished had never even occurred to him over the urge to get him help. ( _'Bleeding heart'_ , Tim has been called before. He feels like he's hemorrhaging. He doesn't take it back.) 

"I can't stop you from leaving," he adds. He's seen his body do it on captured film before, but he probably couldn't on his own, and definitely won't be able to once he walks out and drives off. "But please don't." 

Alex looks and doesn't speak, and Tim won't make him promise. He wonders if he'd be surprised to come back and find Alex gone, or to find Brian dead and Alex in handcuffs. He hopes he would be. Hopes he doesn't have to be. 

He stumbles out to his car and gets behind the wheel mechanically, pointedly doesn't look at the mess in the back seat. His vision blurs as he's driving away, vulnerable in the terror of what he'll find at the end of these roads. The thing at the back of his head howls in grief and Tim makes no move to comfort it.

But he hopes, _god_ does he hope, that he can make this work. 

(God, _please_ let this all work.) 

**Author's Note:**

> DON'T move someone who has fall injuries lol, i'm cutting the characters some slack because 1) it's fiction and 2) since there's a reference to real life brian's rock climbing hobby in canon, I figured it would be both fun and fair to say that Brian Thomas also did some rock climbing - so he knows How to fall and isn't hurt as bad as he could have been. still a very bad idea. 
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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